G'Day - January 28-Feb. 1

How lovely it was to meet the Grandparents and Special Friends of your children last Friday. The children were so happy to show their Grandparents and Special Friend's their work, classroom and school. I saw so many smiling faces in both the Grandparents, friends and students.

We are back into a full work week and it turns out to be a busy one.

Tomorrow morning the students will be engaged in various fun activities related to Australia (seeing it was Australian Day on the 26th and the continent we are visiting at the moment in social studies) and in the afternoon will gather with the rest of the Shorecrest community for a whole school photo and quick pep rally at 1:45. Please have your child dress in their green, gold or white colored spirit wear for this special occasion.

Current Event presenters this week will be: Claire and Matthew on Tuesday; Noah and Stella DeFrain on Wednesday; Nico and Rose on Thursday and Nick and Stella Davis on Friday.

Kristin L. will be our Parent Reader on Friday.

Other Important Dates to Mark on Your Calendar:
* The Used Uniform Sale - Tuesday, January 29 from 8am-1pm
* Spring Conferences - Thursday, Feb. 7
* President's Day - Monday. February 18
* Town Meeting Sharing - Tuesday, February 19
* Class Picture Day - Wednesday, February 26 in the Crisp Gym
* Relay for Life Cookout - Thursday, February 28 (a letter will be sent home with more information)
* Reading Week - March 19-22

Here is what else is going on in class.

Literacy
* Phonics - short vowel (e/ea)
* Spelling List - ahead, bread, healthy, spread, steady, breakfast, sweat, feather, treasure, ready
(plus five high frequency words if these have not been mastered yet)
* Vocabulary - impress, fib, charmer, champion
* Story of the Week - George and Martha (The Fibber) by James Marshall
* Grammar - Review punctuation to help add meaning to reading and writing
* Writing - Reading and researching an Australian symbol or topic of interest
* Handwriting - Sentence spacing, paragraph writing and the use of the apostrophe

Mathematics - Unit 5
* Exploring polygons
* Identify the names and the characteristics of various quadrangles
* Compare and contrast the characteristics of 3-D shapes
* Review partial-sums addition

Social Studies - Australia
The students will continue researching their topic of interest about Australia to present in class. They will become experts about their topic of interest through the research process.

Science - Plant Growth and Development
Students will measure and record their plant's height in centimeters on a graph. They will continue observing and recording notes in their plant journal.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE; We will be cleaning up the garden this Friday, so please have your child bring back their gardening gloves and an old t-shirt to put over the top of their uniform. We will also be picking green tomatoes to make fried green tomatoes with Mrs. Bell. This will be fun!